The Ties that Bind

Noam Chomsky and Gore Vidal have been saying it for 40 years; Ralph Nader's been preaching it for 4; Zoe Mulford, Monkeyfister, has illustrated it beautifully; all that, and it has the additional virtue of being true: corporations own and run America, including the Republican and Democratic parties, which are but two aspects of one corporate-dominated political machine.

On nearly every crucial issue of our time, excluding perhaps only a woman's right to choose abortion, there are either no differences, or no significant differences, between Al Gore and George W. Bush. In this season of conventions, and protests, the irony is of course that the Republicans and Democrats are desperate to seem distinct, the desperation owing to the immense difficulty of the task. It's as if Mickey Mouse had declared war on Donald Duck, each trying their damnedest to seem unlike the other; sure, one's a mouse, the other's a duck, but they're both cartoons, both owned by Disney.

Among the ties-that-bind the Republicans and Democrats together -- chiefly an addiction to corporate money and control -- I want to call attention to one that isn't nearly as visible as it is emblematic: namely, Ed Rendell, the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. The parties and conventions have a curious chiasmatic structure: the Republicans held their convention in Philly, a very Democratic town; the Republicans are holding their convention in Los Angeles, a town which is, if not very Republican, very Republican-friendly, including a Republican mayor, Richard Riordan.

The significance of this criss-cross structure didn't occur to me until August 1st, the day that Philly arrested 400 folks for nonviolent civil disobedience (and in some cases for making puppets). I suddenly understood that Riordan and Mayor John Street's collaborations made it likely that Philly was going to keep folks in jail as long as they could in order to prevent as many demonstrators as possible from making the trip to LA. John Street was simply being loyal to his party, and they both were simply being loyal to the corporate interests which they represent.

So what does Ed Rendell have to do with any of this? Let's see, how about some history on Ed Rendell, courtesy of the good folks at Joint Action for Mumia:

• As D.A. in Philly in 1982, Rendell orchestrated and led the political crusade against Mumia Abu-Jamal, "including unconstitutionally using Mumia's Panther Party affiliation in the sentencing phase" in which he requested the death penalty;
• Presided over the militaristic bombing of the MOVE headquarters in 1985, resulting in 11 dead and 65 homes burned to the ground;
• Presided over scores of convictions, subsequently overturned, achieved by means of prosecutorial and police abuse;
• Excluded systematically, as a matter of policy, African-Americans from Philly juries;
• Became mayor of Philly on the strength of police support; a member of the Fraternal Order of Police;
• Lead as mayor the disgusting Philly attack on the Black United Fund;
• Employed Buzz Bissinger -- did PR for Rendell's mayoral campaigns -- who wrote last summer's Vanity Fair article in which it's claimed that Mumia had confessed; (read critiques of the Vanity Fair article here, here, and here);
• Preparing for a PA gubernatorial run in 2002;
• Married to U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals judge Marjorie Rendell; Mumia's appeal is presently being reviewed in the 3rd Circuit;

Rendell represents perfectly the ties-that-bind the Republicans to the Democrats, particularly in the season of conventions. The interests of the two parts of the one American Corporate Party are far more convergent than divergent. Both Republicans and Democrats want more than anything else to maintain power by serving faithfully and well their corporate masters. Rendell's part and parcel of the racist criminal justice, prison-industrial complex; as beholden as any Republican to the corporate powers that benefit most from it. Because of the central role he played -- with Judge Albert Sabo, Mayor Wilson Goode, and Lynne Abraham -- in perhaps the most egregiously political prosecution in American history, Rendell, and all the Dems, should be perfectly at home with Mayor Riordan in LA, home of the CRASH/Ramparts police abuse scandal.

Philly, LA. Republicans, Democrats. It's all so neat and tidy. How could we -- we who refuse and resist the warehousing of black men, the imposition of a racist police state -- how could we not protest?